Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Exclusive: Spy Hunter Takes A Backseat

About a year ago the trades reported that Resident Evil and Alien vs. Predator director Paul W.S. Anderson will direct Spy Hunter, the big budget adaptation of the popular Midway video game that revolves around a transforming supercar called the Interceptor.

At the time Anderson was suppose to be working with another writer to pen the project, which has already gone through several writers, including Michael Brandt, Derek Haas, Zak Penn and Stuart Beattie.

Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has long been attached to play the secret agent behind the wheel of the vehicle. And back in 2004 John Woo was originally attached to helm the movie.

Now during Comic Con I had a chance to sit down with Anderson on a TV interview (which, you can see HERE) to talk about his upcoming film DEATH RACE a redo of 1975's "Death Race 2000" and managed to squeeze in a Spy Hunter question.

It looks like the bigscreen version of "Spy Hunter" has taken a backseat because when asked about Spy Hunter and they way he answered the question to me at least, seems that he is not doing it anymore. He might write it but it sure looks like he will not be directing the project.

I’ve also been told from people who are close to the project is that Anderson is NOT doing the film and that he’s been off the project.

I hope one way or another this project does happen already. We've been following this for a while now with the Script Review (CLICK HERE), and the animatics (CLICK HERE) for the film where you can see how the Interceptor changes into a boat and a cycle and more.

Will The Rock still do the movie? Who knows. Will Universal Pictures still do the film? Who knows, maybe not. Will another studio pick up the project? Who knows.

Here is what he said when asked about Spy Hunter.

Latino Review: Does this (movie) prepare you to do another [car film] like Spy Hunter?

Anderson: I had some what fun making this movie and I firmly believe this is the best, most spectacular car action I've ever seen in a film, I don’t know if I’ll ever do another car movie after this, because I really feel like we pushed it to the max and the only other car movie I’ll do is maybe a sequel to this, knock on wood, if this movie does well enough to deserve that, I really think we’ve kind of raised the bar when it comes to car action….we’ve done everything practical, we’ve done spectacular stunts, we’ve kept it R rated, really hard, we’ve had the actors do a lot of their own driving, so you know, I think we’ve really maxed our car movie, so I think we’ve laid down a challenge to any one else, I think we’re now the movie to beat.Original here